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Name Change Poll

The first question, authorising the admin team to change the Wiki's name has passed unopposed, with 31 YES votes, and no maybes.

The Results of the second in full:

Fallout Wiki: 15 Votes (plus 1 excluded vote).

Fallout Universe: 4 Votes

GeckiPedia: 3 Votes

Nukapedia: 20 Votes (plus 1 excluded vote)

So perhaps proving your can't beat the real thing, Nukapedia appears to have won the poll on unconfirmed figures. Before you Nuka Fans get excited - the vote and change need to be confirmed and actioned with the admin team, I intend posting a special message when this is done.

Logos

I've suggested that for the logo stage we act in a similar pattern to the Name Change poll, but with a few changes. Firstly, I want to hold off any poll for a week - allow the confirmed name (when its confirmed) to inspire you all to create some great logos. This should also give us time to sort out how we're going to do this - my suggestion is after a week or so if we get enough entries we do a "vote for as many or as few as you like poll" again, and have the leaders move on to a single vote poll - but if you've got another idea on how to handle this, or have your logo ready, I'll be opening up a forum page (and linking it here) after the new name is confirmed.

Best Wiki 2011

The Best Wiki of 2011 has concluded. We managed 11th, managing to beat our arch rivals in the Elder Scrolls/Skyrim Wiki (which is well done as they have their big release) and the Call of Duty wiki. Unfortunately we're about 10,000 votes short of first place - which went to My Little Pony: Friendship is magic. can find more on their page

Oh, yeah, and apparently we beat Degrassi, which means I'm obligated as per the comments of that news piece to post this link. However I do not recommend clicking it: http://youtu.be/CcFhnpZvcpk : Shoulda waited a few days and threatened to sing the My Little Pony theme instead.

Speaking of votes

After a few discussions on various talk pages, I've opened up a forum page to discuss the voting eligibility criteria for future polls. Whether you're happy with the current rules, would like to see higher requirements, or think that certain types of poll should have different requirements, have your say here

Relic of the war that wasn't

Here in the UK if the Russians were to ever launch their nukes, it was estimated that the country would have a whole Four minutes to get ready, at best. Thats Four minutes to detect the launch, and tell people to get to shelter.

Clearly, a public warning system was required, the problem is, building a national signaling network that at best (or is that worst?) you were going to use once could be seen a colossal waste, and a pain to test.

Thats where today's relic comes in: The Speaking clock. For the unsuspecting citizen the Speaking Clock was an amazing thing, you dialled a number on your phone, your call gets routed through some dedicated network links, to a machine that tell you the exact time.

Those links didn't just link the Speaking clock to the UK phone network - it also linked to a special device in all major police stations, and to a master control device at RAF High Wycombe. In the event of a launch the devices in each police station would ring, the designated operator would pick up the handset and hope the next words he heard weren't "Attack Warning: Red" - if he did, he'd be responsible for sounding the alarms - these alarms might be connected to the phone lines of unsuspecting citizens, or even hand-crank sirens.

This solved two large problems - the cost of building the alarm network was slashed through its peacetime use, and the links were always being tested - people would call their phone provider if it didn't. There were however tests of the full system every 6 months.

The alarm parts of this system, called HANDEL were removed in 1992, but the speaking clock still answers calls - there are 60 million tests... I err of course mean calls to the speaking clock every year. You can do your part to safeguard democracy by dialling 123 in the UK, or +44 871 789 3642 if you're international.

You can find out more on how the system worked here. If you have a forgotten piece of Cold War Tech, propaganda, or a cold war site you'd like to see featured, please drop a line on the old talk page - I'd really appreciate your ideas if you want this feature to stick around.